Crown Heights riot

The Crown Heights Riot was a three-day anti-Semitic riot in the Crown Heights neighborhood of New York City in August, 1991. It was sparked when a car accompanying Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson's motorcade, returning from one of his regular cemetery visits to his father-in-law's grave, ran a red light and struck Gavin Cato, a 7-year old Guyanese boy who subsequently died of his injuries.

In the ensuing rioting, Yankel Rosenbaum, a 29-year-old Australian Lubavitcher student was stabbed and killed by a mob. Before dying, Rosenbaum was able to identify 16-year-old Lemrick Nelson, Jr. as his assailant. Nelson was acquitted of murder by a state court but after protests by the Lubavitch community and others, Nelson was charged in federal court with violating Rosenbaum's civil rights and received a prison sentence of 19.5 years. One other man, Charles Price, 44, was charged with inciting a mob, including Nelson, to "get Jews".

In addition, during the same rioting, a 67-year-old non-Jewish motorist who had apparently gotten lost in the neighborhood, Anthony Graziosi, was dragged out of his car and brutally beaten and stabbed to death, presumably because his full beard and dark clothing had caused his killers to mistake him for a Hasidic Jew. No suspects have ever been apprehended in his murder.

The turmoil proved to be a key issue in the next New York City mayoral election, contested in 1993 as a rematch between incumbent David Dinkins and Rudolph Giuliani, whom Dinkins had narrowly defeated four years earlier. On June 16, 1993, a huge rally was held outside City Hall in downtown Manhattan, the primary focus of which was out-of-control criminal violence in general (which the Dinkins administration was viewed by the rally's attendees as being indifferent towards) and continued bitterness over the events in Crown Heights from two years earlier in particular; and several speakers at the rally, including mayoral candidate Giuliani and a Brooklyn-based African-American community activist, Roy Innis, even went so far as to label the Crown Heights episode a pogrom. Giuliani won the election, and subsequent polls showed that a significant shift in the Jewish vote from 1989 was a major contributing factor in his victory.

Accomplished performance artist and actress Anna Deavere Smith wrote a one-woman play "Fires in the Mirror" about the racial tensions in Crown Heights after the riots. In an interwoven series of brief monologues, Ms. Smith presents 29 characters based on verbatim excerpts from interviews conducted with her subjects. The play seeks to facilitate intercultural exchange and public discussion about sexual and racial politics, ethnic identity, and multiculturalism. The piece premiered at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in New York City and was later adapted for film by American Playhouse for public television in order to meet international demand for the piece.